It's time for Edinburgh Castle. That military installation that changed hands many times over during the turbulent history of Edinburgh. It's raining, in Edinburgh. Shocking idea, I know. but this is in July, well into the summer months. Even coming from the Pacific North West, where rain is just normal weather and any deviation from "water falling from sky" is deemed a bit unusual. Even for me, rain, serious rain, serious "this rain will resupply the aquifiers and protect this region from drought for years to come" is not really thought to be reasonable in JULY. |
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But I digress. It's raining. We shuffling through the Aesthetic Debacle that is the temporary stadium, and are kind of shuffled towards the entrance. There is no real line. No indication of what is happening. We just eventually shuffle through a quadruple line of folks standing with scanners to check our tickets. A sign here or there or a helpful repeated public message would have helped alleviate the momentary chaos and panic of hundreds of tourist just sorta kinda moving in one direction because we have no where else to go. Is this a meta-analogy of weird aimless march of civilization until it hits some arbitrary turning point then all the historians tweak history back and forth until it all makes a meaningful whole? Probably not. But people start thinking things when being shuffled through the rain through a temporary stadium towards stone and iron battlements, is all I'm saying. |
| There are cannons! Napoleonic era cannons! Which are, yes, just decorative, not historically accurate, and just put here due to some bureaucratic whim. I'm sure there are more analogies to be made here but I'm too wet and grumpy at this point and then BOY HOWDY we see a real howitzer. A modern cannon used to fire the 1 PM gun. Historically used to help synchronize naval captain/master's watches to the time so they could better navigate in the age of sail and not do something silly like beach their ships on some rocks, breaking the ships back, losing all the cargo and pulling all the crew to their early watery death. All in all a good notion. |
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We walk about, going from area to area. It's more free form than I thought it would be. Military museum down there. Museum to the Peninsular war over here. That pavillion? I'll call them pavillions. Had a wealth of information all of which has long since fled my memory. Usually detailing the exploits of this regiment or the other in the age when the fastest you could shoot was about once every 30 seconds if you were very very good. And then what you shot was about as accurate as you could hope for as the person getting shot. Not very. This overall scheme, from a humanist point of view seems to be a rather good combination of speed and accuracy that sadly has fallen out favour. |
| There was also a military prison. It was stark and brutal and it seems some people went rather mad in these things. The alternatives the prison was replacing, was of course, public whipping, possibly to death, so, maybe this is a net positive. All I knew is I didn't really want to step into any of these cells being under the strange idea that the second I stepped into one all the lights would turn off the door would close behind me, and a speaker would blare out "prison is now fully operational please enjoy your stay", and I'd be sent through a Brazil-esque charade of justice and spend the rest of my dwindling tin years (whatever the years are before my silver years) in solitary confinement trying to convince Scottish authorities I never was in the military and getting non-sequiturs back like "Oh a Pre-emptive Deserter I see". This is all to say when they say 'men were made of tougher stuff back then, not like now', the 'not like now' is decidely me. I'm the much maligned future of which old timers are shaking their heads at. |
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  | There is also an older prison, more for POWs or prisoners of war. Here we see them making beautiful craft .. boxes? Yes, I could see myself spending my waning years making the perfect decorative box and being paid an extra cup of moldy water. The 'not like now' bit of me would be the prisoner who just spends out their sentence, as opposed to say, mounting a daring escape feature a chimney broom, three bowlfuls of porridge, and a broken lantern. |
| We take a rest from all the walking and rain and plaque reading (yes, there was plaque reading). And rested in a quite well appointed cafe in the middle of the castle. I'm sure this was a former torture chamber or a place that fitted warhorses with war horse shoes and .. war bridles. You get the idea. A lovely spot to dry off and have a coffee and not think about what part of the war machine this room used to power. It might have been a lovely well appointed cafe hundreds of years ago as well. Although, I suppose, not before Europe started importing coffee from its colonies. So, back to war horses and torture chambers. |  |
 | And then we are up and at them, to the Crown Square with Some Building With Military Officers around them, the Scottish Crown Jewels, and some Other Castely building. We opt for the Other Castely building and are pleasantly surprised to be ushered in none other than the castle's Great Hall. A room of banquets and state events, then a barracks, then returned to medieval glory in the late 1800's. |
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| It had all sorts of things war afficionados would find, well, super cool. Armour! Swords! Pikes! And a period accurate docent who played medieval era music on medieval era instruments! That was by far the most fascinating. No matter the shape or size, he would explain a bit about it's fundamentals, what class of player might play it, and just play something. Granted, he might have just been making it all up but I'd like to think a docent of a national monument would have some level of credentialling. |  |
 | Then we head over to the Building with Military officers and suddenly realize we are in a war memorial. I should be reading signs more carefully, and frankly, I thought I did. But this is an entire shift of atmosphere. I feel there should be a hallway and more warnings that one is about to walk on some hallowed ground. It's one thing to walk about a great hall where kings and the like signed treaties and had feasts. It's quite another to walk on ground dedicated to honouring those who laid down their lives for their country. |
It was beautiful, and sombre, and honestly I did not expect it, as it looked like all the other castelly buildings. Those who died WWI, WWII, and various other wars after 1945 are memorialized here. Better people have had better words for those who left all their family and friends and put themselves in harms way; often for good reasons, sometimes not, as wars go. Standing there, reading their names, looking at how young most of them must've been. They, unlike the many royals and the like honoured in so many places here, are most like normal folks. But time and circumstance caught them in a whirlwind of politics then brinkmanship then violence. Regardless of the reason, there is only awe when thinking about their sacrifice, all they left behind, all they might have been.
| Looking outwards, you can see another cemetery, but this for all the dogs who lived and were taken on as unofficial mascots of the various regiments who lived and worked here. |  |
  | Continuing up, we found Mons Meg, the largest cannon of it's age (1457). It could fire a 150kg gunstone up to 3.2km (from the Edinburgh Castle website). The tomahawk cruisemissle of it's day. As always, there's part of me that says. Isn't it awful, the human toll it cost when it was used. The people it killed, the wanton violence it supported. And the other part is like 'whoa, 150kg 3.2 KILOMETERS?'. 225lbs or so. For persepctive, during the peak of Age of Sail (early 1800's, the time period I'm most familiar with), the Star Destroyers of the time, the HMS Victory, for example, was thought INCREDIBLE that the heaviest guns threw a 32lb ball. |
| We ended our tour in St Margaret's chapel. An ancient, teeny tiny chapel meant for medieval royalty. It's the sort of space you can imagine a small group of ladies in waiting and the queen hiding while the castle is under siege. Or where a king might decide if this Lollardly heresy business was worth going to war over (I had to skim 3 pages of an obscure PDF for this bit, dear reader). It was small, austere, but reinforced to handle the odd trebuchet hit or diving bombing run. But the most interesting factoid about this chapel is the St Margaret's Chapel Guild. A group of women who look after the chapel, beautifying and maintaining it. All of them must live in Scotland (understandable), and have the name Margaret (charming!). Do mothers name their daughter's Margaret in hopes they join the Guild? Do Margarets of the area dread/hope for the phone call that calls them to service? |  |
| At night we went out to a bar to have a few drinks and a bite to eat with the bride and groom to be, whose wedding was the entire purpose of this visit. It was charming, I drank too much, ate too little, but was a lovely ending to a full day, if only a little wet. |
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